Tag Archives: Pulse acquisition

After what many people think of as Google’s poor decision to drop Google Reader, LinkedIn has announced their acquisition of Pulse to strengthen their LinkedIn Today news sharing feature. According to the LinkedIn announcement:

“We believe LinkedIn can be the definitive professional publishing platform – where all professionals come to consume content and where publishers come to share their content.[emphasis added.] Millions of professionals are already starting their day on LinkedIn to glean the professional insights and knowledge they need to make them great at their jobs. We believe we can help all professionals make smarter and more informed business decisions leveraging all the great business knowledge flowing through LinkedIn in the form of news, Influencer posts, industry updates, discussions, comments and more.

Pulse is a perfect complement to this vision. Pulse’s core value proposition is to help foster informed discussions that spark the decisions shaping the world around us through news and information. This shared view that the power of professional information and knowledge can transform lives and the world makes LinkedIn and Pulse a particularly great fit. We couldn’t be more thrilled to be working side by side with the Pulse team to create new and better ways to help professionals contribute to and leverage this collective body of business knowledge to help them be great at what they do and from wherever they work.”

Pulse brings a news reader that has relationships with more than 750 publishers, and distributes content to 30 million mobile users, LinkedIn says. Where Google Reader was a tool for individuals to find information, LinkedIn and Pulse can make it possible for individuals to find and share information.

Announcements are one thing, and actual service release is another. We can all think of acquisitions that never saw the light of day. But if LinkedIn makes this happen, Google may find their disappointed Reader users migrating to LinkedIn. All we have to do is wait and see.